We're Changing Our Name to Serve You Better

Greetings and welcome from your friends at

(Rev)eresence. You may not recognize us,

what with our new logo and carefully-

crafted letterhead -- copyrighted down to the

font -- but we want to be your church/

community-based faith organization/source

for fair trade coffee. Our name, (Rev)eresence,

reflects who we are and wish to be. The name

combines the words "reverence," "essence," and

"effervescence," all of which we like --

to an extent. So, we want to share our faith

with you -- our "reverence" -- but not to the point

of having very beliefs strong enough to

offend anybody. That is our "essence," the

inoffensive center of who we think, in all modesty

and insecurity, that we are. And so, we add

just a bit of "effervescence" to keep our design-

agency-aided name, to keep us young, hip,

and full of carbonated gas. The parentheses

shows you that we don't take our

theology so seriously, and we hope you won't,

either. So we invite you to join us in our

inchoate but very friendly wandering across the

cosmos, created by God (if it doesn't offend you

to use that name) and accompanied by

Jesus (whom you may call "Yeshua" or "Joshua,"

depending on your preference) by the power

(very gentle) of the Motivating Force -- which

some elder folk call the Holy Spirit.

Coffee and conversation at 9:00 (or so).

Transition to worship at 10:15 -ish.

Drumming on Sunday nights at 8:00.

On the morning of the day that I die

On the morning of the day that I die,
I will lie awake in bed for a bit,
holding my wife and adoring every snore
and twitch that arises from her good deep sleep.

On the morning of the day that I die,
I will find that, against all odds and
vagaries of illness and accident, I managed
to outlive the goldfish who resided in the bathroom tank.

By noon of the day that I die,
I will have held all my children close to me,
from in my arms to in my lap to by my side
to eye to eye, tall as I, my children no longer mine.

At lunch on the day that I die,
I will enjoy some pad Thai, and not because
it rhymes, but for its slippery saltiness
and heat, O the heat, of the sauce.

Sometime on the day that I die,
I will exercise for the sheer joy of it and not
think once, not once, I say, of its cardiovascular
benefit, nor of the calories that I am burning.

And at close of day when I die,
I will shower, slowly just this once,
and touch every scar I can reach, and recall
every easy and every bitter victory that this body wrought.

At the end of the day that I die,
I will sit in the most memory-cluttered
part of my home, and I will decide
to freely let it all go, to not fight the loss.

I will lift up my eyes on the day that I die
to my God, and I will indeed say, "It is well,"
and I will surrender to the ages,
and I will leave this. I will fly.

19 December 2011

Jared Johnson, ISS

The secretary has sent an email asking

for assignments for Jared Johnson, who is serving

two days of in-school suspension for crimes

that I can only guess at,

confidentiality being what it is.

I am to put down on paper all

that will transpire in two fifty minute periods

of class time, our shamefully short study of Paradise Lost,

“The Fall of Satan,” to be specific --

the sneaky little details to be teased out of

Milton’s mad iambic, the dark fire and despairing anger

of petulant Satan cursing God for his own

condemnation, all that I want Jared

to learn. And I wonder

if Jared Johnson already knows quite a bit

about despairing anger as he sits alone

in the ISS room, asking the secretaries

for permission to use the bathroom,

to go to lunch, for more to do.

Will Jared repent of his sins or like Satan

plot new ways of inflicting himself on the world?

I will have him read the section of the poem

we will discuss in class, take notes on it,

write at least five questions that matter,

but what Jared sees will not

be our collected vision in room 306. Maybe

it will be better. Maybe he will see the irony

of being in a small hell and reading about an angel of light

who curses not his own rebellion

but the just God who chains him in a darkness visible.

Jared, is it better to rule in ISS than to serve in room 306?

The gifts of the subconscious

You dreamed about her for two nights before recalling

who she was, your current student and dream-world girlfriend,

grown up and teaching junior high school, with a roommate

who kept things from going too far, along with your subconscious.

You and she made out, to put it bluntly, kissing and rubbing,

nearly chaste if not for the fact that you were already married in the dream, too.

They lived in a ratty little apartment and kept house badly,

so you dreamed of cleaning out, to their glee, the disgusting toaster

and of cleansering out the sink, which was too greasy

for any civilized adult. Your subconscious

also kept you ashamed, for though the dream’s streets were unfamiliar,

the car you drove nothing like the one you’d drive in real life,

you still had the sense to be furtive and fearful, pulling a cap

down over your eyes and hoping no one recognized you,

that your own children wouldn’t be in that unknown part

of the unnamed town.

When you realized who she was,

you were shocked – except for your subconscious, of course,

which never is. Your girlfriend in that dream looked forward

to your marrying, even though her being half your age

would be an improvement. She found you funny, exciting,

generous, maybe even good looking, though dreams

can only go so far.

Who do you think you are,

having dreams like this? Your dreams are so much more

mundane as a rule, about replaying high school sports

or telling off the supervisor badly in need of it. Rarer

are these of the subconscious wish-fulfilling variety, which perhaps

makes them the greater and more unsettling gift.

Annunciation

A pregnant teenage girl isn't rare, never has been,

nor are the frantically perplexed parents who can't

explain certain events. She's been such a good girl, obedient,

as religious as a 14-year-old can be. Her fiancé is

as amazed as the parents, hurt and confused

that his intended has violated his trust and their commitment

to each other. When they can finally talk, when all

the gossip has died down, they confess to each other

what neither can believe.

Angelic messengers now are

co-conspirators with teenagers.

His friends doubt his sanity and her explanation.

He could have done better, they say.

She always did have a manipulative streak.

Her family don't know what to think, finding

this delicate balance of belief, incredulity, and reality

impossible to manage, so improbable that

it must be holy, separate from all others

but so similar to the holy improbability

of any child's birth.

Poem on a narrow piece of paper

How deeply can even a poet

go on a piece of paper only

two inches wide? No room

for large images, the kind that

take up the entire camera

view. Reader, you will have

to work harder, because the

poet is squeezed by its

format. Williams did a lot (or

did he?) with "The Red

Wheelbarrow," and then there

are the cute and louche

limericks that barely take up this

width. But for us of less

ability and lower

imagination, there is not

much room to work. In the

name of obscure scribblers

everywhere, though, I am

giving it a go. Just don't get

your hopes up too high.

Forget about enjambment.

Imagine rather that this poem

is full of the fine detail that

wider poems have; an easy

meter that sounds natural,

internal rhyme that is scary

for its surprising appearance,

and a conclusion.

The Home-made Gum Case

I complained to my children that someone

had taken all the gum out of

its tidy packaging and deposited it in the canister,

thus removing from it any form of identification. “Is this

Fruity Blast or Wintergreen? Who knows?” Probably

I said too much, maybe too hard. Anyway.

By the next day my cannily-artistic middle child

had unbidden made for each family member, out of index card

and scented marker, a gum carrying case, personalized,

its flip-top lid secured with Velcro.

Problem mostly solved. And the part that isn’t,

what can you do but give it over to grace, to thanks

that your children see a chance for redemption

where you see only chaos? What matters,

they say to us with their offerings of greater understanding,

is that we know what each other needs,

and that we see to it by including ourselves in the transaction.

You will have a small funeral

The idea sounds so sad,

only a few to see you off, the last remnants

of those who knew you at your fullest, their numbers

drained by the swamps of old age, accident,

illness, even violence. Say you live to be

a hundred, as so many will in the age of

nanomedicine and robotic surgery, and having gone

away from northern states' snows, are now in Florida,

or New Mexico, or even Texas,

and there you come to the end. Shipping's

expensive, either for your remains or for those

who would see you buried, so the southern locals will

attend to you, they who knew you for a mere

twenty years or so, and they don't go to many

funerals, since there will be so many to choose from.

Hopefully, the lead pastor will be there, not just her

assistant, out of respect for your cockeyed contributions

to the church, and likely appearing will be

your wife if she's up to it, and the self-proclaimed

fogeys who drank coffee with you on cool mornings.

It will be a sunny day -- that's why you had moved there --

and the temperature will be on its daily rise,

so the service will be brief,

and everybody will go back to the church for

fruit salad and turkey sandwiches. The church will be empty

by two, the mourners counting their blessings and wondering

how many more they'll see before

their own. Yes, you will have a small funeral,

yet it will be larger than the time

they rolled in place the stone of a borrowed tomb,

not knowing then how silly a funeral really is.

Top Ten Country-Western Song Titles for Bread Loaf School of English

10. “D-E-C-O-N-S-T-R-U-C-T-I-O-N”

9. “My Heroes Have Always Been English Metaphysical Poets”

8. “I’ve Got Friends in Ivory-Towered Places”

7. “Take This Job and Shove It Into Tenure Track”

6. “All My Exes are Existentialists”

5. “Bubba Shot The O.E.D.”

4. “Good-hearted Person of Uncertain Gender in Love with Socially-irresponsible Person of Indecisive Gender”

3. “I Never Promised You a Favorable Review in the Times Literary Supplement.”

2. “That’s My Unreliable Narration and I’m Sticking To It”

1. “I’m Going Back to a Better Class of Neurotic, Self-doubting Literary Wannabes”